It’s Labor Day. Time to re-evaluate your “career path”

I just read an interesting post that was shared by Carol Sanford (One of my favorite thinkers.) on Twitter earlier today.

The manifesto Carol shared asks us to purposefully look at our careers not from the perspective of a defined path, but from that of broad possibilities. This got me to thinking of the idealized career path of a prior generation.

Yesterday’s Career Path

The old goal, find a steady job with a steady firm has fallen by the wayside. The treadmill of change was stuck in neutral for a while, but it’s back on and picking up speed these days. Very few of us will have long-term careers with a single company now. This brings us to what I see as today’s career path.

Today’s Career Path (Based loosely on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs)

If you find yourself in the box on the right, I’d recommend reading Richard Oliver’s Purposive Drift Manifesto first. I think it can help you “get your mind right” about how to approach your career. Once you get that figured out, start figuring out your unique way to make a difference and start doing it…until it’s time to see what else is out there again. (These days seeing what else is out there is more likely to be about that which you can create, rather than that which you can find.)

If you found this interesting, I welcome you to check out my books. I'm currently finishing up the last part of the book on Brexit that I'm serializing. Parts (1) covering the challenges in the EU prior to the referendum, & 2) which dives into the primary factors that drove the referendum's result, are already out. Part 3, which covers the events and circumstances following the EU referendum in June 2016, is scheduled for late 2018. The first book by the Wicked Problems Collaborative, an anthology titled, "What do we do about inequality?" is also available!